96. Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall Subway Station (IRT)

Location: Under Centre Street between Chambers and Frankfort Streets
Built: 1901-1904
Architect: Heins & LaFarge
National Register Number: 05000674
Listed: July 6, 2005
Visited: Multiple times; mainly December 3 and 14, 2008
Official Documentation: NRHP Nomination Form



In spite of the name, this is not the famous abandoned station at City Hall you may have heard about--the one with vaults and Gustavino tile. No, this is its more anodyne brother. (The other one will be covered...whenever.) Originally known as the IRT's Brooklyn Bridge station, it took over as a terminal and a portal to the mysteries of city government when the City Hall station closed in 1945. Hence the name: Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall.

Like the original City Hall station and twenty-six others, this one inargurated the subway system on October 27, 1904, so its historical import is fixed and clear, but whatever once made it a distinctive aesthetic artifact is unfortunately not for public consumption. Only six years after it opened, the station's outermost platforms were declared redundant and were walled up; later some ends of the remaining platforms were blocked off when they were lengthened in the other direction. These no-go areas, visible only to MTA workers and the occasional subway wonk (not an insult!), have what's left of the station's original tilework. A mid-90s renovation merely references aspects of the original design--like the double-B symbol that used to be heralded by eagles--perhaps out of a sense that recreating the originals would be dishonest, not to mention costly. Not bad, but on the mezzanine level is a bolder kind of referencing: Mark Gibian's Cable-Crossing, which transforms the cabling of the nearby Brooklyn Bridge into sinuous Tyrannosaurus spines.

95. Chambers Street Subway Station (Dual System BMT)

Location: Beneath the Municipal Building at Chambers, Centre, and Duane Streets, and Lafayette Plaza
Built: 1911-1913
Architect: Heins & LaFarge
National Register Number: 05000669
Listed: July 6, 2005
Visited: December 14, 2008
Official Documentation: NRHP Nomination Form



Once a crowded terminal for trains coming in from Brooklyn, this subway station's functionality was compromised throughout the 20th century by new connections and a shift of the city's vibe uptown. Now several entire platforms are unused and inaccessible, including the eastern-most one that, if I remember correctly, has all that's left of the original mosaics. They're in a grubby state, but they've been worse off, and the whole station's been much worse off. It was informally voted the ugliest station in the New York subway system, quite a lot to live down. The MTA has since cleaned it up a bit, but fascination the station exerts on me doesn't come from the grime but its sense of the empty. The station is unusually long, high, and wide, even reasonably well-lit. Everything is open and visible--yet not everything is reachable--and yet again, there's nothing around to reach. Subway stations are empty all the time, but not like this: the platforms of Chambers Street have the feel of a museum whose exhibits have all been plundered, a dying department store reduced to selling the displays once the stock's all gone.

66. Chambers Street Subway Station (Dual System IRT)

Location: Under West Broadway, between Warren, Chambers, and Reade Streets
Built: 1917-1918
Architect: Squire J. Vickers
National Register Number: 5000674
Listed: July 6, 2005
Visited: May 8 and 12, 2008



Did I say that I knew the Park Row Building more intimately than any other landmark? Yeah, I did. But as this station was part of my daily commute for nearly eight years, it comes close. Back when there was a World Trade Center, this place served as a transfer point for express and local trains going to and from Penn Station and the Cortlandt Street station that was a short walk to Tower Two. I used to take a combo of express and local trains, thinking that'd be quicker than the other two options: taking the local train exclusively, or taking the express and walking a third of a mile. It rarely worked that way. Evenings were usually OK, but in the mornings I'd be stuck here, waiting, waiting for the local train to come by, waiting and waiting and waiting as express train after express train kept dumping people off. I'm sorry, it must be boring to read that--it bores me to even type. The wait at this station was one of the quotidian parts of my life that, for a brief time every day, would be at the forefront of my thoughts (WHY is the TRAIN not HERE? WHAT the HELL is WRONG? I'm GOING to be LATE GRRRRR etc. etc.), then it'd slink away, happily forgotten and purged. Whoever you are, you likely go through similar.



Funny, for all the time spent in the station, I didn't actually explore it or anything. I'd just stand in a spot, maybe pace. Read a book. Wouldn't go upstairs, wouldn't notice the tile work. It took me years to realize the tile border plaques in here and other stations functioned as something beyond a mere generic decoration. According to nycsubway.oreg, the building depicted above was part of King's College--later known as Columbia University--and stood on Park Place before it was demolished in 1857. I think I'd prefer having the college building still standing to the subway station, all things considered.

39. Wall Street Subway Station (IRT)

Location: Under Broadway at Wall, Pine, and Rector Streets and Exchange Place
Built: 1905
Architect: Heins & LaFarge
National Register Number: 04001011
Listed: September 17, 2004
Visited: September 28, October 3, and December 1, 2007



This station is almost completely renovated; LowerManhattan.info says "interior rehabilitation project will conclude in late November 2007" but as of December 1st there were still construction guys doing something-or-other. Far as I can see, the main differences are the removal of electric blue bricks installed in a woebegotten 1979 renovation (a similar to the one in Bowling Green that smothered Heins & LaFarge's tilework with the color of tomato). Now the station is bright and white, and the original 1905 elements--the decorative iron work, mosaics the color of money, and terra cotta tiles depicting a stepped Dutch roof peeking over the original wall of Wall Street--can now sing their populist arias uninterrupted.



One thing missing though: a wooden ticket booth mentioned in the AIA Guide to New York City. I couldn't find it on any of my trips to the station, and I don't remember where it was supposed to be -- I used to work in the area for years but this wasn't my station. What I remember of it, pre-renovation, is ramshackle dimness, but that could describe the condition of most Manhattan subway stations I used until the mid-nineties, when it seemed like a whole bunch of them got cleaned up, one after the other. I don't miss the Bad Old New York anywhere near as much as you likely do, and the subways are one reason why.

15. Battery Park Control House

AKA: Bowling Green IRT Control House
Location: State Street and Battery Place
Built: 1904-1905
Architect: Heins & LaFarge
National Register Number: 80002669
Listed: May 6, 1980
Visited: August 19, 2007



Today in the annals of New York City lostness: the subway entrance. For the IRT, New York City's first subway line, the architects Heins & LaFarge designed handsome iron and glass kiosks and masonry control houses. None of the original kiosks remain. Not one. (The one at Astor Place? A replica from 1985.) Somewhat more substantial structures, three control houses still exist, two still functional. This is one of them. (The other is at West 72nd Street).

Much like our friends at 13 and 15 South William Street, its rounded gables were inspired by the local buildings of 250 years earlier. After all, what better way to dress up the most technologically-advanced municipal facilities of 1908 than with the architectural styles of the Flemish Renaissance?

Thing is tiny, uncomfortably so. Sure, it looks quaint on the outside, but with only two turnstiles, it takes any sizable crowd of people far too long to exit from it. And given that it's the subway exit closest to the Statue of Liberty ferries, there's always a crowd. Sometimes the crazy Statue of Liberty people park in front and the tourists stop and gawk, further blocking the flow of people. Luckily there's a larger entrance between Bowling Green Park and the U.S. Customhouse; otherwise, I'd worry more about people getting crushed should fires (or worse) break out on the platforms below.

7. Joralemon Street Tunnel

Location: From Bowling Green to beneath the East River
to Joralemon St. and Willow Place
Built: 1903-1907
Architect: William Barclay Parsons
National Register Number: 06000015
Listed: February 9, 2006
Visited: August 1, 2007



The list of Manhattan sites on the National Register of Historic Places includes a small scattering of hardcore irregulars that aren't buildings or concatenations thereof: twelve boats (including two aircraft carriers), five bridges, twenty-five subway stations, and two tunnels -- the Holland Tunnel, and the one under the microscope today, the Joralemon Street Tunnel. 1.5 miles of wormhole under the East River, its claim to greatness is that in 1908, it helped connect New York City's first underground subway line into Brooklyn. For all that, I'm not sure I've ever been through it before. The Joralemon carries the 4 and 5 trains; if I go to Brooklyn, I typically use either the 2 and 3 trains or the M and R trains, and they go through the Clark Street and Montague Street tunnels. More typically, though, I don't go to Brooklyn at all.

Down by the nearest train station, I let a few trains pass until there's one empty enough, not that people blocking my view is going to be my main problem. For all of the subway trains on this line, a small portion of the front car is dedicated entirely to the train conductor. Thus any good head-on view of the tunnel has to be seen through two windows, at least one of which features a kind of distorting glass that prevents a person from seeing much of anything around its perimeter. Plus my digital camera -- eight years old and two measly megapixels -- is absolute shit when it comes to darkness, even when supplemented by a flash. So I get on the train knowing and accepting that any photograph I take of the tunnel isn't going to be remotely illustrative, just a token effort at best.

You know, I'm OK with this. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been rather hard-assed lately about personal photography on the subways, having made overtures towards banning it entirely not once but twice in the last few years, and according to Wikipedia, they still don't allow flash photography. (Uh, oops.) God forbid anybody detains me I can always show them my blurry and indistinct pictures of not much. Still, I can tell the other people on the train are a little skittish seeing me take pictures: they too are thinking about bombs in tunnels. One guy sitting down is muttering something under his breath. It probably doesn't help that I have a mid-sized beard and thus look OMG possibly potentially "Al Qaeda" or maybe just "crazy-ass" to those not hip to the hipster trends in facial fashion.

OK, so what does the Joralemon look like? Well, it looks like any other subway tunnel ribbed with tracks and supports that prevent the East River from crashing down onto us. If it has any grace that marks it as being something other than a wondrous feat of engineering (the way that, for example, the Gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge make it stylish, maybe even witty), this is either lost on me or lost in the dark. It is not completely dark, mind, but outside of the odd shape of the tunnel walls (almost keyhole-shaped -- I must be remembering this wrong), what I can see best are the chromatic blue and green lights.